Waynesville theater closes suddenly

Smoky Mountain Cinemas in Waynesville shut its doors last week, leaving Haywood County residents with no full-sized movie theater playing current releases on a local screen.

“We have put forth every effort to keep operating the theater. Unfortunately we were just another causality of our time due to the crossroads of film changing to digital,” according to a recorded message at the theater’s phone number.

The long-time movie theater in Waynesville still had film projectors. New movies will no longer be put out on film, so the movie theater would have to convert to digital, but the volume of customers the theater gets wasn’t enough to justify the cost.